Stone Barrington 06-11

in one of the other elevators, we’ll stop her.”

    “Good.”
    “Now, you’re going to have to organize a search of every floor between you and the ground, knocking on every door and checking out every woman who even vaguely fits her description.”
    “The FBI is already working on that,” she said.
    “Dino has called his people off your offices and is bringing them here, but if Marie-Thérèse has already made the ground floor, they’re going to be too late to stop her. Our only chance is if she’s still somewhere upstairs.”
    “We have a new description,” Carpenter said. “She’s wearing a pantsuit, color undetermined, and she has short blond hair and is carrying a large handbag.”
    “Got it,” Stone said. “Call me with any news.” He hung up. “She’s now got short blond hair,” he said to Dino, “and she’s wearing a pantsuit.”

    Marie-Thérèse found the elevator key, slipped it into the lock, and turned it. She looked up at the floor lights. The car was three floors above her and headed down. After a long moment, the door opened, and she pushed the cart aboard. She looked at the buttons on the control panel and discovered that the hotel had a basement and two subbasements. She inserted her key and pressed the basement button. The doors closed, and the car started down.
    To her alarm, it stopped again almost immediately, and the doors opened. A busboy pushed a room-service cart aboard, but her cart was between him and the control panel. “Push SB-one for me, will you?” he asked.
    She inserted her key again and pressed the button. The elevator began moving down again.
    “Man, this day is a bitch,” the busboy said in Spanish-tinted English. “I got half a dozen carts to get downstairs, and somebody’s stopping me every two seconds.”
    “Why are they stopping you?” she asked, alarmed.
    “They’re looking for somebody upstairs,” he said, “some woman. That’s all I know. Security is all over the place, and there’s lots of other guys I don’t know, guys in suits.”
    “I’m new here,” she said. “What’s in subbasements one and two?”
    “Kitchen on SB-one, laundry on SB-two,” the man said. “Hey, I buy you a cup of coffee sometime in the lounge, okay?”
    “Sure,” Marie-Thérèse said. She was starting to sweat under the two layers of clothing. And she was frightened.

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    Marie-Thérèse changed her mind and pushed the elevator button for SB-2.
    “I thought you were getting off at the basement,” the busboy said.
    “I meant to go to the laundry,” she said. “I got confused.”
    “Yeah, it takes a while to learn your way around this place.” He got off at SB-1. “See you later.”
    “Yeah, sure.” The door opened again at SB-2, and she pushed the cart out ahead of her. And there before her was something she had been looking desperately for: a sign saying exit, with an arrow pointing to her left. She pushed the cart in that direction, then followed another sign, turning down a long hallway. At the end was a door with an EXIT sign over it, but there was a uniformed, armed security guard standing in front of it. This shouldn’t be too difficult, she thought.
    She pushed the cart nearly all the way to the door, then stopped and took her handbag from the hamper.

    “I’m afraid you can’t get out this way, lady,” the guard said. “I got orders.”
    She adopted the Spanish accent of the busboy. “Oh, I just want to have a cigarette outside,” she said. “They give you a hard time if you smoke inside.” She rummaged in her handbag, as if she were looking for her cigarettes.
    “Yeah, I’m a smoker, too, so I know how it is, but I still can’t let you out this door. It’s orders from upstairs.” He rested a hand nonchalantly on the butt of his pistol.
    Marie-Thérèse stopped rummaging in her bag. If she tried to shoot him, he’d have a head start. “Oh, well,” she said, “I’d better get back to work. I can have my smoke later.” She turned the cart around and pushed it back the way she had come, looking for another way out. She found another exit, but there was another security guard standing in front of it, and he looked less friendly than the last one. Finally, with nowhere else to go, she went back to the elevator, put her key into the lock, and pressed the button. She’d try another floor.

    Carpenter showed her ID to the guard and took the express elevator to the lobby. As she stepped out, Stone and Dino